VIENNA, Feb 20: British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court on Monday after it found him guilty of denying the Holocaust. Mr Irving had pleaded guilty at the trial here on a charge dating from 1989 of denying the Holocaust but insisted his views had changed and he no longer questioned the existence of gas chambers.

He appeared stunned by the verdict and told reporters as he walked out of court: “I’m very shocked and I’m going to appeal.” Mr Irving, who had faced up to 10 years in prison, has been in custody since his arrest last November following a routine check on a highway in Austria.

The warrant had been issued by a Vienna court in 1989 on charges that, at meetings in Austria, he had denied the Nazi regime used gas chambers. He was also on trial for saying the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews was not the work of the Nazis but of ‘unknown’ people who had dressed up as storm troopers, and that Adolf Hitler had in fact protected the Jews.—AFP